It's the Drinkend!

Friday and the weather is gorgeous! Gonna be perfect temps and low humidity this evening. You know what that means, right? On Deck with Le Booze.

To celebrate the end of summer, send it off with a good rum. Yeah, I know; "good" and "rum" don't normally fit in the same sentence. It's usually nothing more than filler for crappy mixed drinks. But I've actually found one I can qualify as a "sipping rum": Cruzan. The dark variety has almost whiskey-like overtones, rather than the paint thinner-and-moonshine bouquet of most rum. It's not expensive, so stop carping and try it.

Speaking of moonshine, have you ever been curious about the etymology of the word? Of course you haven't, but I have because I'm queer about words. So I looked it up:

After the English Malt Tax of 1725, most of Scotland’s distillation was either shut down or forced underground. Scotch whisky was hidden under altars, in coffins, and in any available space to avoid the governmental Excisemen. Scottish distillers, operating out of homemade stills, took to distilling whisky at night when the darkness hid the smoke from the stills. For this reason, the drink became known as moonshine.

Now you know. Salud!